Posted on 12/17/2021 6:35:03 PM PST by DUMBGRUNT
A brawl over pay at Columbia challenges academic solidarity with the working class.
Consider Columbia, where many student workers earn little more than New York City’s $15 hourly minimum wage.
The UAW wants $45,000 for 12-month appointments and a minimum $26 hourly rate for non-salaried workers, with annual increases. The union says a single adult had to make at least $45,285 to live in Manhattan in June 2020—before this year’s inflation.
“Columbia made $3.1 billion in returns on its investments this past year alone,” the union says, adding that its demands for a three-year contract would amount to a mere “3% of its increase in net assets from investments.” Columbia charges $63,530 in undergraduate tuition and fees ($82,584 including room and board), which over four years is as much as a cost of a house. President Lee Bollinger earns roughly $4.6 million, and full-time professors make on average $268,400. It’s fair to ask why the university can’t afford to pay student workers—many of whom are being buried in debt that they may never be able to repay—more given they do much of the teaching and grading.
We take no side in this dispute, though you have to smile at what the Marxists might call the contradictions of academic production.
Companies that underpay workers and mistreat customers won’t survive long. But universities with brand names have a captive clientele as well as steady subsidies in the form of federal student loans. This is why many were able to get away with keeping classes remote last year without discounting tuition.
The next time you hear professors lecture about inequality in American, ask them about the state of the academic working class.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The greedy bastards!
Defund Brick and Mortar Unis.
They are of no furthur use.
Big Education:
1) make unlimited loans available to gullible students
2) raise tuition to vacuum up funding
3) pay profs and admins massive salaries
4) profs and admins contribute to Democrats
and repeat....
How I’d rejoice at the demise of overpaid college professors and the destruction of the whole anti-American education edifice!
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